Tokyo Blog
Tokyo Story
stephendavidsmith.net, my blog from the metropolis. Tokyo, Japan 2010stephen[at]stephendavidsmith[dot]net tokyo story RSS flickr Tokyo Blog
This is the story of me in Tokyo.
I’ve seen these all over Tokyo. Shibuya, Akihabara, Harajuku, Naka-Meguro and now this one, in a grungy underpass in the heart of Shinjuku. I’d heard about the mystery of BNE, but had never bothered to look into it properly, so I did a little research. It seems that the phenomenon is indeed worldwide, and the artist, whoever he/she maybe has great taste in cities. So far these stickers, and other BNE works, have been spotted in Hong Kong, San Fransisco, New York, Kuala-Lumpur and of course Tokyo and more besides (including London, no doubt - in fact I think I saw some on my last visit home on New Year’s). Authorities are furious, but mostly everyone else is plain curious: who is the mystery bomber? A news article from ABC investigates.
A printing company somewhere on the planet, responsible for running these off, must know the answer? Leave your own insights in the thread.
3 Responses to “Guerilla Art: The Mystery of ‘BNE’”
Leave a Reply
May 14th, 2009 at 12:34 am
Yeah this is nuts! When I went home back to Brisbane in 07, I’m pretty sure I saw one too! And guess what? The international code for Brisbane is BNE! It’s me it’s me!!
June 18th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
BNE is the trade mark of an australian hip hop trio who write music about world affairs, freedom, wars, and especially, peace love and unity.
look up Bliss N Eso on youtube, im sure you’ll find a video FULL of BNE stickers.
they promote BNE at their shows.
June 24th, 2009 at 8:57 am
I checked the videos, but I couldn’t find any BNE stickers in there. I can dig hip hop, but that stuff’s cheesy as the day is long. I can’t accept that those douchebags are behind such a prolific bombing campaign. I heard some graffiti artist called Benet was behind it - and that theory I DO believe. He signs his sprayed work BNE, and sometimes sprays a 1 above the letters BNE. There’s also a sticker version of this exact sig. Further more, this artist Benet is either Japanese or half Japanese, which explains the rather rare Japanese word that features on a limited number of his stickers. I guess these Aussie rappers fake the credit for these stickers, as well as an American accent.